economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports . but about the big picture i'm tom arbonne coming up in this half hour today is valentine's day so what better way to celebrate than to talk about the various ways other members of the animal kingdom keep their relationship fire burning in tonight's geeky science i'll tell you about a species of bird that really knows how to show a lot and if you talk to john boehner eric cantor of the rest of the republicans on the hill said the federal government sixteen trillion dollar debt is a huge problem a threat to our nation but in reality it's not there is a debt in this nation far worse and far more devastating i'll tell you about it in tonight's daily to.

welcome your take my take it live our phone lines are now open so if you want to share an opinion make a comment ask a question live on the air give us a call to a two nine zero four twenty one thirty four so for a first caller the night denny in morgan field kentucky what's up. i was calling but your minimum wage bill yeah i've been a small business owner for thirty years and raising minimum wage definitely increases causes inflation and the other thing is the house only gets hurt the most i raise minimum wage is the people that earned raises and don't get a raise when and where each comes up there or inflation cause them to actually have less buying power than they have people with minimum wage increase standing i've been an employer for over thirty years and i just have to fundamentally disagree with you i don't know if you genuinely are an employer i appreciate you calling in by the way but or if you're just trying to get that talking point out but i can

tell you the minimum wage and all the research is there it's quite solid it's and common sense would dictate it by the way that when you put more money in the pockets of people at the bottom of the economic ladder who are going to spend all of it we're not talking about raising minimum wage so on and on and on raising nine dollars then those people spend that money and that stimulates the economy creates demand not inflation demand or cause inflation or price shocks things like well in the seventy's the arabs cutting off the oil to the united states the price of oil driving that's what causes inflation not the minimum wage in fact today's minimum wage would be ten dollars twenty five cents an hour if we had simply index the one nine hundred sixty one minimum wage to inflation if we had simply indexed it to inflation and so then there has been deflation as a consequence paul in boise idaho paul it's on. faith i'm going to talk to you

first from caller thanks for the call and i totally agree with your. when your agreement with the minimum wage increase in fact i do think it should be least ten dollars an hour and the other thing that i want to touch on was. you know compared to you know say when reagan took over and. you know wages stagnated since then the price of real estate has skyrocketed so you know how is a person supposed to achieve the american dream. if you are if you can't make a livin to start with and then you can't afford to buy houses well what you're what you're pointing out paul and thank you for doing so is the consequence of moving from what's called a manufacturing economy to what's called a fire economy used to be that about a third a little over a third of our total economy about twenty percent of it is government about a third of our total economy was actually caused it was manufacturing and then you got you know another twenty percent fifteen to twenty percent that's medical and

you got you know retail portions but. we have moved from a third of our economy being manufacturing and about ten percent of our economy being finance real estate and insurance find it finance insurance and real estate f.-i are those fire we've gone from mostly manufacturing and a little bit of fire economy to the exact reverse we are now over thirty i think it's thirty five percent or something like that is is the fire economy and only eight nine ten eleven maybe it's a lot or twelve percent is what actually here's there's the chart you can see and as that fire economy has gone up what that means is that you know real estate is is going up artificially in price because that's the new economy so everybody's chasing that as manufacturing collapses and what collapses along with manufacturing good paying jobs so you have people not you know they're not getting good paying jobs they're not getting good wages you can see it's now eleven point two percent if i'm reading the chart right and whereas the economy is now it isn't twenty one

percent twenty one point nine percent so you know that's what's happened and so the good paying manufacturing jobs have gone away we used to be able to use to buy a house and they've been replaced with jobs and in finance or real estate joe in just. a job what's up. yeah i was just on the internet night you know you hear things here and there and i came across two of the biggest gun so-called american patriots fighting for gun rights in this country or did nugent la pierre and. here i heard. he basically got out of going to vietnam by having a nervous habit i don't know if you heard anything about that or i have no. i mean if he if it is true would he be considered a. mental health risk should be allowed to own

a gun. i don't know joe thanks thanks for the call. i just am not a wayne la pierre scholar i know ted ted nugent had a colorful story that he liked to tell back in the seventies i guess it was the high times magazine about how he got out of the draft. frankly i'm a little ambivalent about that i was of that generation and we knew that the vietnam war was a lie the gulf of tonkin resolution was a lie and it was a bad one and it wasn't like my dad's warning of world war two. so i'm not going to criticize these guys for that i i think just criticizing sloppier and and ted nugent for taking it for basically being shills for the gun industry might happen tony pointed out earlier this this is an industry that is putting hundreds over one hundred million dollars a year into its marketing arm its lobbying arm which is the n.r.a. and we should be buying their stuff i mean i mean we should be buying these stories we should be paying attention to who they are where they're going to get money from

mark in evanston illinois hey mark you want to talk about guns. just kind of. can you speak up a little bit you're on the air i'm listening to you ok ok what i'm saying is i get the distinct impression you're completely and. maybe i'm wrong ok. i want to tell you something. we've had. for years. i'm sixty two years old and quite frankly i don't feel safe. i'm handicapped disabled i have no way to. take on. well i'm sorry what i do i do not want to take away your gun i'm a sports should i self and i am i am what i'm what i'm suggesting and what i've

been consistently suggest on this program is number one the weapons of war should be on the battlefield not in our cities and number two that. as. you know i go back a weapon of war should be on the battlefield not in your home and you don't need a hundred thirty rounds in a clip to protect yourself from let me tell you so you know you're cutting me off you know you're being real prick ok per my way it works but you know i'm listening look as if. there is no problem there is a color problem this is where there are very large thanks for try and. this this this racist crap i don't know how to say it beyond that it's just it's tragic it's truly tragic there you know gun violence in the white community there's gun violence in the black community there's a gun you know and if anything it what it is symptomatic of the gun violence in the

united states first of all if people are twice as likely to be committing suicide with a gun this is and i know this from personal experience when i was eighteen years old my best friend who was having some struggle with depression was able to walk down the street buy a gun went back to his bedroom put in his mouth and blew the back of his head all over the wall and i was one of the people found it and i believe to this day that if that of clark had not been able to walk in easily by that gun he'd still be alive and he would've gotten help number one and number two. well i'll just leave it at that actually that's it that's enough i've said might actually number two i think that if we're if we have a for saying that for cars because they can kill people you get that you register them you prove that you're competent to use them and you insure them we should certainly do the same for guns and i don't see why any respond. simple gun owner would not say hey i'm a responsible car owner all register my car i have liability insurance and i can prove that i can drive you to the same thing with

a gun i've been through gun safety courses and gun training everyplace in the georgia police academy to an n.r.a. course and i think you know this is this is easy stuff thomas in milwaukee wisconsin a thomas what's. your on air thomas. thomas please when i'm calling is in regards to the minimum wage when i was first employed back in the seventy's we had a cost of living raise it kept us up with the economy thanks to ronald reagan who. traffic controllers back to work back to work when you want a contract issue that's when the cost of living when away now you have the minimum wage a family of four especially a state of wisconsin where the taxes cannot possibly make it on minimum wage. from jobs before and now i'm back in the workforce the minimum wage will not.

survive for minimum wage a lot of businesses small businesses who minimum wages what they want to make money off those employees they don't have good health care. good benefits. the only way that i can make it and be rich and get rich is by keeping the minimum wage but what about the employer the long employee who comes in to work. out who does what he's supposed to on the job make money for you you need to thomas thomas on. my interrupting but i only have thirty seconds to wrap this segment up and i just wanted to echo your i totally agree with what you're saying and let me add to that that with the minimum wage right now a full time minimum wage. is still taking money from the government they're eligible for food stamps and medicare and other forms of government assistance on the other hand if we raise the minimum wage up to the point where people are no

longer in poverty they start paying taxes into the government it is you know we should be selling those the republicans should be selling this as a deficit reduction program so that's it for your take my take live thank you for all of your calls if we didn't get your call tonight tries back again next week. after the break politicians in washington love to argue and mowen about america's sixteen trillion dollars in government debt but there's a far more insidious type of debt one that has the ability to destroy our economy you know really nasty tell you what it is and how we can do away with it and i.

choose your language. we can we know if you're going to. choose the consensus you. choose to get. to. choose the stories that you. choose. to. basis based on. you know i care read. this. to some degree which is because. it. seems for. them to stop the bloodshed this sort of thing. is there were two months into the scheme.

it's thursday let's get geeky i'm going all out for our mates today is valentine's day so what better way to celebrate this day of love than by talking about how far some animals go to him crouse and take care of their loved ones according to a new study jay birds who are in love go out of their way to feed their mates the food that the mate loves and craves researchers at cambridge university in england discovered this sweet and enduring behavior by taking pairs of aged jaybirds and putting them in adjoining compartments so that the male could see what the female was doing through a small window the researchers then fed the female a meal of sumptuous larva in one particular of one particular kind of larva either

wax moth larva or mule worm larva as her partner looked at her a lot of birds literally were then reunited and the male jaybird took on its usual role role of feeding food to its better half or given a choice between the two types of larva available the mate now chose to feed his sweetheart the type of larva that she hadn't just been eating a lot of his female jaybirds at. like variety in their wombs the male jaybird hadn't been watching its mate eat and he fed or whatever larva he like he felt like and the same was true if he was feeding himself his choice was not affected by what his lover had been eating according to the researchers searchers at cambridge the fact that the male jaybird chose to give his plucky partner what she was likely to appreciate what she had been choosing more of what she'd like you would like and more of suggest that the male jaybird has the cognitive ability to understand and interpret the psychotic psychological state of the female partner just by watching

her so many other day men of the world and still valentine's day so it's not too late to get your special someone that larva or chocolate that they really desire. there are two kinds of debt one that's relatively harmless and one that can destroy us all there's public sector debt or government debt the blueline here which is over sixteen trillion dollars this is the sort of debt the politicians like to scream about this from here. when they demand austerity and then there's the private sector debt that's this red line. that's the debt owed by you and me and millions of americans across the nation in the form of credit cards home and car

loans and america's corporate debt. this sort of debt doesn't seem to bother politicians at all even though total private sector debt is right now thirty eight trillion dollars more than double government debt more than double our g.d.p. now here's what you need to know. private sector debt. excuse me public sector debt is not a problem at all our national debt despite the big number is not a threat to our nation currently our national debt is roughly one hundred percent g.d.p. after world war two it was much higher as over one hundred twenty percent of g.d.p. but rather than freaking out in the one nine hundred fifty s. and demanding austerity spending cuts both republican and democratic presidents harry truman to eisenhower and lawmakers grew our nation out of the so-called debt problem with government spending there were massive government investments to build the interstate highway system to send returning g.i.'s to college and to grow the

social safety net we built schools and hospitals all across the country and it worked with more government investments more americans were put to work which meant they had more money to spend which meant more businesses hired more people to keep up with the higher demand which meant americans all around were earning more money and pay more revenue into the government through taxes. our debt to g.d.p. ratio plummeted from its peak of over one hundred twenty percent in the one nine hundred forty s. . to below fifty percent the one nine hundred seventy s. got here and then reagan came along gave billionaires a massive tax cut increased defense spending and our national debt exploded again but two presidents later bill clinton had a had the budget balance the nation on track to completely eliminate the national debt within ten years george w. bush blew up that plan with his tax cuts his wars as corporate giveaways and his economic crash so now we have a pretty massive debt again although not as big as the one that truman and

eisenhower faced and beat our nation has a long history from the revolutionary war to the civil war to world war two a dealing with national debt that's higher than we have right now and reducing debt levels that are much higher than we see today that's why government debt is not a problem right now with just a small amount of political will it can be solved pretty easily more government investments to put people to work and more taxes on the rich they can pay their fair share again have always solved the past on the other hand private sector debt is a huge problem not only as a devastating the livelihoods of millions of americans around them it's also pushing our economy toward collapse after world war two total private debt was below fifty percent of g.d.p. . today it's more than two hundred fifty percent of g.d.p. which is even higher than it was. just before the last great depression there are

several reasons for this the first is that when reagan stopped in force in the sherman antitrust act businesses started merging in acquiring each other like crazy because the changes in the rules and how that could be done private equity or l.b.o. firms came into existence companies like bain capital driving the monopolistic merger process with trillions of dollars in debt today virtually every corporate merger involves the company taking on huge debt while the executives in the pirate equity boys take home billions the result is that most of these private sector debt is corporate debt and that is dangerously high it's a teetering towering house of cards. remember how it looked just before you know just right around the time of the nash of the great depression and then there's household debt since reagan americans have not been paid more for their increased productivity. so wages have failed to keep up with the rising costs of housing energy education and health care. to make ends meet americans had to extend

their credit lines they turned their home mortgages in a.t.m. machines further sinking into debt also there was a housing bubble which was caused by banks pushing mortgages of debt on millions of americans knowing that those same americans were unlikely to be able to pay down those liar loans as mortgages and debt but the banks made a ton of money selling off that bad debt to other investors before the market went bust and the banks also made a fortune skimming fees off the top of every single transaction and of course all the losses that the banks toure's alternately did incur during the crisis. they were repaid by us by our government thanks to the bailouts but nobody seemed to care about the debt that everyone else who wasn't a banks are still have. nobody except the banks who are still trying to suck more and more money out of their indebted customers and are now bringing back debtors prisons to help in this effort. arkansas.

in arkansas breast cancer survivor lisa lindsay was thrown in jail because she didn't pay a two hundred eighty dollars medical bill which was charged to her by mistake debtors prisons haven't officially been used in america since before the civil war but today a third of the states in the country allow debt collectors to use the public court system to go after people who owed the money is even a lot arkansas that allows landlords to throw tenants in jail if they're late on their rent so in a roundabout way the debtors prisons have returned to america. this is a huge problem because economies depend upon consumers people like you and me spending money before in debt up to our eyeballs and being thrown in prison for that debt we can't spend more money to stimulate the economy this is what economist steve keen told me on my radio show this week. that's why you run across as this is the thing. i'm going to do in the trying to get this through to people it's the

dynamics of profit did it really have to determine the good and the crunch are in now. while debt can be useful and free up more spending in the economy we've reached a point where businesses and individual americans can no longer afford to go deeper into debt and the major reason why the economy continues to stagnate after the collapse is because americans are paying down their debt rather than spending money in the economy and the more americans continue to pay down their debt instead of spending the worse for the economy will get when this happens cain told me you plunge off the cliff. even government stimulus can't help at this point whether it was bush's stimulus at the end of two thousand and eight that gave everyone a couple hundred bucks for obama's stimulus in two thousand and nine any extra money americans get from the government is diverted away from the economy and put instead toward pain down there are huge individual debts and that has no

stimulative effect on the economy at all it. it makes more money for banks trips. if private debt was fifty percent of g.d.p. like in the one nine hundred fifty s. when americans could afford to both buy things and pay down their own debt and ditto for businesses. but at two hundred fifty percent of g.d.p. that private sector debt strangles the economy and sets the stage for a looming economic collapse. so what's to be done well here's a solution we should wipe the worst and most destructive of the private sector debt the debt that prevents people from spending we should wipe it off the books keane the economist from australia calls for a debt jubilees here in america. i think the only way out of this is to abolish the debt and you can do it in a lot of the damage of. innocent bystanders and ice so i took a look at all the modern digital age use usenet see it money can ask the government to i also launch amount of profit it's a benefit started as

a science so basically that means using the government to simply payoff much of the individual debt across america for mortgages to student loans to credit cards this is also the approach occupy wall street is taking with its strike debt campaign though that organization is also relying on private donations to help buy people's overdue debt at a cheap price and then just completely wipe it out a debt jubilee is not a radical idea in fact it's promoted in the bible in the book of leviticus which calls for a debt jubilee every forty nine years as leviticus twenty five ten reads this fiftieth year is sacred it is a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property and slaves will return home to their families debt cancellation is supported in the koran too and it was use in ancient athens and many native american societies wiping out private debt would on leash a norm of spending in our economy in ways we haven't seen since the boom years of the one nine hundred fifty s. and the one nine hundred sixty s.

hillary's. seriously being considered by our lawmakers today is because a debt jubilee would cut into the profits of the banks toure's who thrive in fact prey on a nation but in the not too distant future as our economy continues to collapse under the weight of tens of trillions of dollars in private sector debt our nation will be faced with an alternate choice strike debt or watch our economy completely co-op's in a way that will make one nine hundred twenty nine look like a picnic let's make the right choice now. and that's the way it is tonight's thursday feb fourteenth two thousand and thirteen happy valentine's day for more information check out our websites of thom hartmann dot com free speech or r t dot com include dot com slash the big picture and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there get active today your occupy something we'll see tomorrow.

it's technology innovations all the developments from russia we. covered. i never knew adam lanza person but i was in the

same high school as adam he was younger than me just going to be younger. i always thought he was different i always see there's something funny he rarely talks and you don't he was a shy kid. i don't know anyone who is friends with him i also don't know of anyone who is particularly mean to the what i do know is that it was very clear that this person was not like everybody else. can imagine the level of mental illness that would be present to murder children. america's you know so when you go on this there would be an american behind every tree with a gun. i think for kids growing up in this environment is good for them at an early age to least see the gun and respect it because they need to know what kind of damage it can do. this is our first task as

a society. keeping our children safe. this is how we will be judged.